Street Scenes

01.11.13

Mike Swaney Puts Barcelona On Lock-Down

The Daily Pic: The Spanish city's security gets seen through Canadian eyes.

Canadian artist Mike Swaney has filled one wall at Mulherin + Pollard, in New York, with these little collaged gouaches of burglar bars in Barcelona, where he now lives. I like how they take the rigorous grid of modernist art and put it back on the street. Also, because Swaney’s grills are cut out and stuck onto the windows behind them, there’s a sense that he’s put his mild-mannered subjects on lock-down. Pictures that look like casual jottings from life turn out to be complex constructions.